Last September, Russia deployed dozens of jets to Syria to rescue the ailing regime of Bashar al-Assad. Vladimir Putin aimed to protect one of Moscow’s few foreign allies and gain leverage for the coming peace negotiations over the Syrian Civil War. Russian media presented the mission as a heroic attempt to save the civilized world from Islamic terrorism. In Washington, however, Putin was widely seen as wading into a quagmire. According to The Economist: “If America’s Syria-watchers agree on anything it is that the Russian campaign, which has enabled Mr Assad’s forces to make only minor gains, will fail, and thereby encourage Russia to give up on its proxy. That would be a huge boost to the UN-backed peace talks John Kerry, the secretary of state, is brokering, with the aim of replacing Mr Assad with a transitional government early next year.”
But would a loss for Putin really be good news? While it’s tempting to take satisfaction in the Russian president’s travails in Syria—what you might call Putinfreude—Syria-watchers should question their assumptions. If Putin’s military adventure unravels, the result may not be peace.It’s certainly easy to imagine the Russian intervention deteriorating. In recent weeks, Assad’s forces have made some limited gains around the Syrian city of Aleppo. But the overall strategic situation for Damascus remains highly precarious. Last year, the Syrian regime suffered a string of battlefield defeats, and Assad publicly admittedto “fatigue” and “a lack of human resources [in the army].” The regime pulled back to defensible territory and was left in control of a rump coastal strip representing around one-sixth of the country. Russian jets are not enough for victory. It would likely take tens of thousands of troops to recapture and hold cities like Aleppo and Raqqa.
Russia is in a perilous position, internationally isolated and enduring economic turmoil. And now Putin has plunged into the unknown. Moscow doesn’t have experience coordinating military operations with Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah. This is Russia’s first military expedition outside of its immediate sphere of influence since the end of the Cold War. Putin has also pinned his fortunes on a highly incompetent dictator; Assad’s policies of systematic torture and barrel bombing of civilians brewed the hell broth in Syria.

And two can play at the great game of proxy warfare. Patrons of the Syrian insurrection, like Turkey and the Gulf states, may match Russian intervention by stepping up their own assistance to rebels—in the form, for example, of anti-aircraft missiles. During the 1980s, the Soviet Union’s counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan unraveled in part because the CIA provided ground-to-air Stinger missiles to the mujahideen.
To get a sense of what could await Putin, look at Iran’s experience in Syria. When Tehran first chose to aid Assad, it likely didn’t realize that Syria would become a sinkhole that would costhundreds of Iranian military personnel and tens of billions of dollars. Or consider Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which marched over the border to save Assad and subsequently lost around 1,200 to 1,700 fighters in a seemingly endless morass.Leaders often respond to defeat with disastrous decisions that only worsen their plight. They rage against the dying of the light.In other words, Putin’s war may very well fail. But if it does, will he make concessions and abandon his ally? If the Russian president acts rationally, he should cut his losses. Putin, however, may not act rationally. When I researched my book on military disaster, The Right Way to Lose a War, I was struck by how poorly governments tend to handle battlefield reversals. From the United States in Vietnam to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, leaders often respond to defeat with disastrous decisions that only worsen their plight. Rather than coolly looking for a way out of the predicament, they rage against the dying of the light.
Part of the problem is what psychologists call “loss aversion.” Losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good—whether in a tennis match or a war. The idea of accepting even a small loss can seem intolerable, and people are tempted to risk greater losses for a shot at the win. The gambler who drops 20 bucks in a casino doesn’t walk away; he doubles his bets. In a similar vein, the president who loses 1,000 soldiers in Vietnam doesn’t end the war; he sends half a million Americans into the mire.

It’s hard to imagine Putin accepting defeat. He has cultivated an image as the father of the Russian people, who is restoring the country as a world power. If Assad’s regime falls, Russia could lose its only military installation outside the former U.S.S.R.—the naval base in Tartus, Syria. Therefore, if the war effort collapses, Putin may want to salvage something from the wreckage, potentially moving the conflict into a dangerous new phase. He could intensify Russian air strikes or deploy “little green men”—as the Russian soldiers serving unofficially in eastern Ukraine were called. Once Russian troops start dying in Syria, all bets are off.To get Putin out of Syria, the United States might need to play along by avoiding boastful claims of a major Russian debacle.Putin, moreover, has repeatedly responded to the potential loss of client regimes with military force. In 2008, the Russian military intervened in Georgia to punish pro-Western Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and protect the independence of the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Six years later, in 2014, Putin aided Ukrainian rebels and annexed Crimea following the toppling of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In late 2015, with Assad’s forces reeling, Putin once again intervened to stabilize a client regime.
And Putin has already raised the prospect of further military escalation, sayingthat Russia is using “far from everything we are capable of” in Syria and that “We also have other things as well and will use them if necessary.”
What’s the solution? If Russia’s defeat could trigger hazardous escalation, this doesn’t mean a Russian victory is preferable. After all, if Assad somehow assumed a winning position, why would he negotiate a compromise peace that recognized the interests of all Syrian groups? Instead, the optimal opportunity for a peace deal may be a situation in which Putin believes a decisive triumph is not possible, but he can still save face by spinning the outcome as a success. In other words, he needs a story to tell the Russian people about the positive results of the mission. This narrative doesn’t need to be true, but it does need to have truthiness, or a seeming plausibility. And so, to get Putin out of Syria, the United States might need to play along by avoiding boastful claims of a major Russian debacle. In 1989, after the Berlin Wall fell, U.S. President George H.W. Bush deliberately refused to declare the development a win—to avoid complicating the life of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.
Putin needs a victory speech. And Washington may have to help him write it.

BEIRUT -- An Islamic State fighter shot and killed his own mother before onlookers at a public square in the Syrian city of Raqqa after he was told that she was not a true believer, activists reported Friday, the latest in IS’s brutal public killings over the past two years in the de facto capital of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

The killings -- and there have been scores since IS blitzed across Iraq and Syria to capture large swaths of land in the summer of 2014 -- are meant to spread terror and intimidate opponents. Many have been captured on camera, with the gruesome videos later posted on social media sites.

In 2014, a woman was stoned to death after IS charged her with adultery. Last year, the group put a Jordanian pilot inside a metal cage, then set him on fire, apparently also in Raqqa. The Islamic State has also posted images of beheadings of captured foreigners, journalists and aid workers, including Americans, British and those of other nationalities.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the Syrian conflict, 20-year-old IS fighter Ali Sakr killed his mother in a public square in Raqqa on Thursday.

The Observatory said the woman, Lina Qassem, who was in her 40s, was originally from Syria's coastal region but had been living in the northern town of Tabqa for more than 20 years. The group said she was trying to convince her son to leave the extremist group and flee Raqqa but he in turn informed IS on her.

Abu Mohammed, a member of a Raqqa-based activist group that reports on IS, known as Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, also reported the killing on his Twitter account. The Observatory said it took place near the local post office building, where Qassem worked.

Meanwhile, clashes in Iraq between a joint Turkish-Iraqi force and Islamic State militants near a training camp outside the northern city of Mosul left at least 18 IS fighters dead, the Turkish president and a former Iraqi governor said Friday.

The fighting erupted late on Thursday outside the Bashiqa camp, which was at the centre of a controversy last month when Turkey moved troops there to protect Turkish trainers aiding local Sunni fighters hoping to take back Mosul from the Islamic State group.Baghdad has demanded that Turkish troops withdraw, describing their presence as a violation of international law. Ankara has pulled some troops out but not all.

Turkish President Erdogan said on Friday that IS tried to infiltrate Bashiqa, triggering the clashes. Former Iraqi governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who founded the training camp, said the attack was pre-empted.

But the commander of the training camp, Maj Gen. Mohammed Yahya, told The Associated Press that he was at the camp on Thursday night and there were no such clashes.

"There were airstrikes on IS targets, but there's always airstrikes. Our troops were not involved in any fighting," he insisted.A commander with the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces at the frontline near the training camp said airstrikes killed 16 IS fighters there on Thursday night. The commander, Saeed Mamuzini, said he was not aware of any fighting between the Sunni-Turkish forces and the IS group.

The disparate accounts of the events Thursday night could not immediately be reconciled.

... Professor Hamoud Salhi’s address, presented at the Center for Contemporary Conflict, of the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School in June 2004.(iii pdf) It is entitled: “Syria’s Threat to America’s National Interest.” It is arguably even more pertinent now – and another reminder of how long Syria has been in U.S. sights.

He opens: “Syria’s threat to America’s national interest in the Middle East can only be understood in the context of U.S. plans to reconfigure the Middle East. Knowing now that the motive for invading Iraq was strategic, taking over Syria would give the United States further strategic depth in the region … tipping the balance of power (even more) in favour of the United States regional allies, Israel and Turkey.”

Salhi notes that “strategic pre-emption” is long central to American policy in the Middle East, citing Rapid Deployment Forces during the Carter Administration, Dual Containment under Clinton, Pre-emptive Doctrine under George W. Bush. Polices, he holds, which: “have been instrumental in maintaining hegemony in the region”, avoiding threats to U.S interests, or to those of Israel,Turkey and the Gulf States.

After the 1998 US-UK Christmas bombing of Baghdad drew world-wide criticism, Salhi points out that the often daily (illegal) bombing of Iraq by the two countries was stepped up, with often daily sorties, “using the latest technology” destroying what minimal economic infrastructure remained: “under the pretext that they represented future threats.” It was he contends, the “quiet war”, an ongoing tragedy little noticed by the world.

The ground was – literally – being prepared for invasion, the trigger finger ever itchier, any excuse sought. George W. Bush would later explain that invading Iraq was necessary: “ … to advance freedom in the greater Middle East …” (Emphasis mine.)

11th September 2001 arguably gave the excuse to release the safety catches. On 20th September 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Bush: “ … recommending the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even if no direct link to the 9/11 attack were found.” Time to redeem American: “supremacy in global politics (and for) regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”

Michael Ledeen, foreign policy expert, another neo-con minded Fox News commentator, alleged to be a “strong admirer” of Niccolo Machiavelli, regarded 1991’s Desert Storm attack on Iraq as a woeful missed chance states Salhi. He notes Ledeen’s view that driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait was wholly inadequate. Strategy should have been: “regime change in Baghdad” (as) “one piece in an overall mission”, which should have been: “one battle … against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.”

That achieved: “…the United States will have completed its final stage of encircling Iran. This would further tip the region’s balance of power in favour of Israel and ultimately open new doors” for the U.S. “active involvement in toppling the Iranian regime.”

PNAC’s John Bolton, as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, had testified before a Senate Sub-Committee on Syria’s threats to the U.S., which of course included terrorism and “weapons of mass destruction” reminds Salhi – pointing out that Bolton could cite no specifics. The more a Syrian danger was inflated, the more “justification” for an attack.

The neoconservative movement was, without doubt, at its inception, a Jewish and Zionist movement - former liberals like Irv Kristol and disciples of Strauss at the University of Chicago who were primarily loyal to Israel and sought to conflate US and Israeli policy, or more accurately, to use America as sword, shield, and treasury for Israeli expansion per the Oded Yinon Plan {perpetually framed as "defense" against the wild, anti-semitic brown hordes}. It was later, due to semantic drift, conflated with "militarism."

Buckley would have had none of this hyperinterventionism

The Jewishness and Zionism of the founders of neoconservatism as such can not be seriously argues as a matter of the history of American political philosophy. Those who *doubt* it should likely simply look into the matter. Those who seek to obfuscate the truth of it probably due so out of a desire to obfuscate the Israel Firster nation of its adherents, for many of whom 'dual loyalty' would be an improvement.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html

This may be politically delicate but need not be. Neoconservatism was engendered by Jewish Zionists of the Likudnik persuasion, and the evidence for this is clear as day. The 'why' we are not supposed to discuss this I leave to the reader, but I object to this memory-holing of the truth, and the legacy of Strauss, who spent his career demonstrating he misunderstood the Greeks.

(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – On Saturday, Khalidiya Council in Anbar Province announced, that 25 senior elements of ISIS were killed in an aerial bombardment carried out by the international coalition aircrafts east of Ramadi (110 km west of Baghdad).

The Head of the Council Ali Daood said in a statement received by IraqiNews.com, “Today, the international coalition aircrafts shelled a gathering of ISIS senior leaders in Khalidiya Island (20 km east of Ramadi), killing 25 elements including the senior leaders in ISIS military wing Hatem al-Bilawi and Mustafa Jassim,” pointing out that, “The bombardment was carried out based on accurate intelligence information.”

Daood added, “The Bombardment also destroyed five vehicles for ISIS near the headquarters of the organization’s gathering,” indicating that, “Most of ISIS leaders are currently existing in Khalidiya Island that became the last stronghold of the organization after the cleansing of Ramidi areas and axes.”

BAGHDAD, January 8, 2016 — Iraqi security forces are learning the lessons of the battle for Ramadi and already are sharing them, coalition officials said here today.

The fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is still going on, but Iraqi military officials already are applying the lessons, said Army Capt. Chance McCraw, an operations specialist with Operation Inherent Resolve.

McCraw spoke to reporters traveling with Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who visited several sites in Iraq and met with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials over the last two days.

The fight for Ramadi was outside the recent experience of the Iraqi security forces, McCraw said, noting that Ramadi was a conventional arms fight that had more in common with the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia during the American Civil War than with the counterinsurgency war Iraqi forces were used to fighting. In Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee held the center while attacking the Union Army’s flank. That was the same plan ISIL had in Ramadi, he said.

The ISIL strategy was to block Iraqi security forces from coming into Ramadi, then using vehicle-borne bombs to attack the flanks of the Iraqi columns.

Learning on the Fly

Iraqi security forces learned on the fly, McCraw said. They could not send explosive ordnance disposal technicians ahead to clear the way, because Ramadi is a built-up area, and a machine gun nest or sniper teams would take an unacceptable toll on the irreplaceable EOD technicians.

“The Iraqis used armored bulldozers and other earthmoving equipment to build berms and walls on the flanks,” the captain said. Iraqi forces also used mine-clearing line charges called “miclics” to clear ways through these bomb-laced blockages.

In this manner, he said, the Iraqi security forces were able to advance and take Ramadi, and the troops involved in that fight are sharing their experiences with troops in other parts of Iraq.

Lessons Will Apply in Mosul

What they have learned will be important when Iraqi forces launch their campaign to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the center of ISIL activity in the country, McCraw said.

Mosul – like Ramadi – is a city on a river, and another lesson learned from the assault on Ramadi was the importance of bridge-building engineers. Iraqi engineers still in training were rushed to the front to build a ribbon bridge over the Euphrates River south of Ramadi proper. “I guess you could call it their graduation exercise,” McCraw said.

In peace, Mosul has a population of around 2.5 million, and the Tigris River bisects the city. Bridging companies will be important to that effort, officials said, and the Iraqis are investing in the capability.

Active combat continues in Ramadi, Iraqi forces are still clearing portions of the city, and ISIL fighters are trying to stage in an area to the northeast called “the shark fin” because of its shape, McCraw said. Iraqi forces have rescued more than 500 civilians who were trapped by ISIL in the city, he added.

Deuce ☂Sat Jan 09, 07:44:00 AM EST...The only thing that is asked of Abraham and of his descendance as a sign of remembrance of this covenant is to practise circumcision. Circumcision must be performed at the age of eight days for every male in the community (of this innumerable, multi-ethnic descendence), be he born in the house or acquired as a slave (17,9-10). And the story ends with Abraham performing on himself and on Ismael and all the boys born in the house the rite of circumcision (17,23-27).

THINK ABOUT THAT:

You wake up to hear screams from the house next to you. You run over to investigate and see this ranting crazed psychopath, blood all over him, butcher knife in hand, blood running down his legs from self inflicted mutilation, chasing screaming blood spattered boys trying to desperately saves their dicks.

ReplyDelete

Deuce ☂Sat Jan 09, 07:58:00 AM ESTJust the way, the only way, only a loving god would want it to be.

ReplyDeleteReplies

Idaho BobSat Jan 09, 09:26:00 AM ESTThat's all you can get out of that article ?

Neocons at National Review: ‘Stop Calling Us Neocons!’Daniel McAdams, January 06, 2016

Print This | Share This | CommentWhen pondering the intellectual decline of political movements, it is hard not to call to mind the former flagship publication of the Buckleyite wing of conservatism called National Review. Where once learned men (and women) made their case from the heights of argumentation and erudition — a force to be reckoned with, like it or not — the publication has over the years accelerated to absurdity, devolved to inanity, shrunk into a whiny club of simpering sycophants screaming full force in an empty echo chamber. An exercise in intellectual onanism, today’s NRO has nothing to say about the future because it remembers nothing of the past. It is conservatism not only without a conscience, but without understanding of that which it purports to conserve.

It may be debatable whether there was ever a Buckleyite movement wholly separate from the neoconservative impulse, or at what point the worms began eating into the flesh of the magazine. But that the neocons hijacked the magazine, silenced any conservative vein of thought not in harmony with their heterodox and revolutionary views (can one be at the same time a conservative and a revolutionary?), and proceeded to redefine what passes as modern conservatism to suit their alien agenda cannot be denied.

So now that the neoconservatives have successfully burrowed themselves so deeply into what was once the conservative movement that they have killed the host, they look around at the destruction they have wrought and scream, “don’t blame us!”

Thus we find ourselves faced with chief whiner of the National Review universe Jonah Goldberg, a man absolutely fearless at the thought of sending others to die in disastrous wars overseas but cowering at the thought of placing himself in harm’s way, arguing that we must not call him and his cohorts what they actually are. In his latest little bitch session in some corner of NRO, he tells us that, “The Term ‘Neocon’ Has Run It’s Course.”

Don’t call us neocons, he says, because the word has no meaning, it never had meaning, and you’re all just a bunch of anti-Semites if you continue to use it. Here is a summary of Jonah Goldberg’s argument for why we should not call the neocons neocons:

1) Neocons were never that interested in foreign policy at first. The neocon was merely, in the words of Neocon Godfather Irving Kristol, “a liberal who was mugged by reality and wants to press charges.”

2) Neoconservatism is not even an ideology at all, but rather, as Kristol averred, a “persuasion.”

3) Neocons like Jeane Kirkpatrick did not advocate rapid liberalization in authoritarian countries, but preferred gradual change. In other words, regime change through the National Endowment for Democracy rather than a US invasion.

4) Neocons were not that radical in their anti-communism, in fact they were more dovish even than the standard National Review writer during the Cold War.

5) Democrats like Bill Clinton also wanted regime change so you can’t just blame the neocons.

6) It’s not fair that neocons get the blame for the disastrous 2003 Iraq war. Lots of others joined them in advocating for the war but they all turned against it while the neocons held steadfast in support.

7) Critics of neoconservatism are actually just anti-Semites. Their criticism of neoconservatism as an intellectual movement is just cover for their hatred of, as Jonah indelicately puts it, “Hebraic super-hawk[s].”

8) We’re all neocons now, so stop calling us neocons. Every Republican is a super hawk, we won, history has ended, so let’s bury those old Cold War terms and just accept that the neocons are the masters. Move along, nothing to see here.

“Meanwhile,” Goldberg concludes, “the Right is having a long overdue, and valuable, argument about how to conduct foreign policy. Keep it going, just leave neoconservatism out of it.”

h yes, let’s have a debate about foreign policy with a pre-condition that everyone agree with the neocon view of foreign policy — pre-emptive war, American exceptionalism at the barrel of a gun, military Keynesianism, national security state at home, NSA surveillance of Americans, gunboat diplomacy without the diplomacy, and so on.

Sorry Jonah. Not going to happen. Sorry that history is a cruel judge of your disastrous movement, but don’t count on the rest of us to pretend something isn’t what it is. Neocon.

Daniel McAdams is director of the The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – On Friday, a source in the Joint Special Operations Command announced, that 35 ISIS elements were killed in six air strikes in the city of Barwana west of Anbar, while indicated to the destruction of six vehicles for the organization.

The source said in a statement followed by IraqiNews.com, “The Iraqi Army Aviation in cooperation with Jazeera and Badiya Operations Command had carried out six air strikes on ISIS terrorist gangs, killing 35 terrorists and destructing six vehicles including a booby-trapped armored military carrier in al-Sakranat area in Barwana City.”

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT, January 9, 2016 — Iraqi forces have momentum against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford spoke to reporters following a two-day visit to Iraq. During the visit he met with U.S. and Iraqi leaders including Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones and Army Gen. Sean McFarland, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.

Dunford also met U.S., coalition and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, Asad and Irbil. He last visited the country in October, just after taking over as chairman.

“I believe the Iraqis now have the momentum,” the general said. The seizing of Ramadi, the operations that have been conducted in Anbar province, the recapture and continued control of the oil refinery in Beiji, and the successful operations cutting ISIL’s main supply line south of Sinjar make him “comfortable saying the Iraqis have the momentum.”

Attitude Shift

The big takeaway from the trip, the general said, is the psychology of the Iraqis. The general met with senior Iraqi leaders, but he also met with Iraqi special operators, soldiers in training, and wounded warriors. The mood is more upbeat across the board, he said.

They are more confident in their capabilities. The Iraqi operation in Ramadi, especially, was Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-resourced and Iraqi-executed. “I felt the Iraqi leadership was pretty proud of their guys,” Dunford said.

And the Iraqis are continuing with the battle. Iraqi forces are moving north into Haditha and they are moving to the east. “They feel it in terms of pressure on ISIL, and they realize they have to keep moving to provide that pressure,” the general said. “They are kind of pumped up about it.”

Iraqi, Syrian and coalition forces have put increasing pressure on Raqqa, Syria, the nominal capital of the so-called caliphate, and Mosul, Iraq, the largest city captured by the terrorists, the general said.

“We have to continue to do things across all of Iraq and Syria simultaneously,” he said. While coalition forces are isolating the two important cities, Dunford said, "it’s not Ramadi, it’s not Mosul, it’s not Raqqa -- it’s all of those and all of it happening at the same time."

Iraqi forces are becoming more proficient in a new style of warfare for them. Iraqi leaders have learned the true power of combined arms and harnessed coalition airpower with their ground forces, “It’s not just about using aviation and waiting until it’s done,” he said. “It’s about using aviation as a cover so they can move and fire and clear. They are better able to integrate effects.”

And Iraqi security forces now have the success of Ramadi to use in planning further operations. Success breeds success, the general said. This is important, because as Syrian anti-ISIL groups move south they are moving into traditionally Sunni Arab lands, Dunford said.

“I don’t want to overstate this, but when we went to Anbar, you could see the tribes are much more interested in talking to our special operations forces,” and momentum builds, he said.

Dunford was not the only American official to congratulate Iraqi leaders this week. President Barack Obama also told al-Abadi that the coalition wants to help the Iraqis exploit the success they are having.

Iraqi military leaders will put together their plan and present it to McFarland, and his team will look for the best ways to support the anti-ISIL effort.

SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 9, 2016 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Fighter, bomber, and attack aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed an ISIL crane and an ISIL workover rig.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike destroyed an ISIL-used culvert and an ISIL fighting position.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is a strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

As for the idea that Assad and the Russians will be losing the war with the Islamic State ...

It runs against the reality of recent events.

The idea that Hezbollah was ever an existential threat to Israel is shown to be a fallacy.The 1,200 to 1,500 KIA they have suffered in Syria is said to be a third of their strength.That would have put their complete contingent at around 4,500 combatants.If 4,500 combatants, set in a defensive posture in Lebanon represented an existential threat to Israel, well then, Israel is a hollow shell.

Trump will destroy the Republican party by… leading Hillary in the pollsposted at 1:01 pm on January 9, 2016 by Jazz Shaw

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So this morning I was reading this piece by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post where he explained how Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination would rip the heart out of the Republican Party. In case you’re wondering if I’m engaging in a bit of hyperbole at Michael’s expense, the actual title of the article is, Trump’s nomination would rip the heart out of the Republican Party.

Every Republican of the type concerned with winning in November has been asking the question (at least internally): “What if the worst happens?” …

Cruz’s nomination would represent the victory of the hard right — religious right and tea party factions — within the Republican coalition. After he loses, the ideological struggles within the GOP would go on.

No, the worst outcome for the party would be the nomination of Donald Trump. It is impossible to predict where the political contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton would end up. Clinton has manifestly poor political skills, and Trump possesses a serious talent for the low blow. But Trump’s nomination would not be the temporary victory of one of the GOP’s ideological factions. It would involve the replacement of the humane ideal at the center of the party and its history. If Trump were the nominee, the GOP would cease to be.

Gerson goes on to opine that Trumps nomination would reduce the Republican Party to “an enterprise of squalid prejudice.” But he also notes that he has no idea how Trump might fare in the general election against Hillary Clinton because she has, “manifestly poor political skills” while The Donald is a master of the “low blow.”

If nothing else, there’s a new poll out from Fox News today which might answer at least one of Michael’s questions for him. The poll begins with the usual list of numbers for the GOP primary which we’ve seen too many times to count and aren’t worth any fresh analysis here today. Trump 35, Cruz 20, Rubio 13, Carson 10, Bush 4, Fiorina 3, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But then we get to the general election head to head match-ups and things get a bit more interesting.

Clinton currently ties or trails the Republicans in each of the possible 2016 matchups tested.

Rubio (50-41 percent) and Cruz (50-43 percent) perform best against the presumptive Democratic nominee. Rubio has a nine-point advantage and Cruz is up by seven.

Hillary isn’t having a good week, what with her emails showing that she was snipping off security classifications to mail around sensitive documents from her bathroom server, and now this? The only one out of the GOP field that she can manage to beat (or at least tie) is Bush, and he’s currently polling slightly behind “Having Your Wisdom Teeth Removed By A Squirrel.”

But let’s return to Gerson’s premise for a moment and the future of the Enterprise of Squalid Prejudice. Perhaps it’s just me, but I think that Michael is missing a rather key point as to what’s happening inside the GOP these days. Trump’s policies, such as they are, don’t seem to have much to do with his popularity. Some of our readers long ago reached a conclusion about the current state of the GOP establishment which took others among us a bit longer to grasp. There was a “Let it Burn” theme to the feedback we were getting even before Trump got into the race. I’ll confess that I was far afield from that point of view last spring, but the recent passage of the omnibus spending bill really seemed to bring a lot more people on board with the idea that the current state of affairs simply wasn’t acceptable.

While Gerson frets over Donald Trump “destroying the Republican Party” there were obviously already a lot of voters out there who weren’t seeing such a prospect as a particularly bad thing. In fact, one of the biggest concerns being aired was the possibility that The Donald might win the most votes and delegates in the primary and then see the nomination stolen from him at the convention by a coalition of party establishment regulars. If that turns out to be the case, then I’m afraid it truly will be the end of the party as we know it for a at least a decade, if not a generation. To a somewhat lesser extent the same could be said of Ted Cruz, a man not quite so “outside Washington” as Trump, but still despised by many of his colleagues in the establishment for upsetting the apple cart entirely.

But what happens if Trump takes the nomination and then, as this poll suggests is increasingly possible, goes on to defeat Hillary for the presidency? Well… we’ll have lived to see interesting times. I have no predictions as to what comes after that, but rest assured that I’ll keep my seat belt fastened and my table tray locked in the upright position.

Trump Could Win It AllA new survey shows a sizable number of Democrats ready to defect from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.The Associated Press

Trump's the one?By James WarrenJan. 8, 2016, at 4:00 p.m.+ More

So if Donald Trump proved the political universe wrong and won the Republican presidential nomination, he would be creamed by Hillary Clinton, correct?

A new survey of likely voters might at least raise momentary dyspepsia for Democrats since it suggests why it wouldn't be a cakewalk.

The survey by Washington-based Mercury Analytics is a combination online questionnaire and "dial-test" of Trump's first big campaign ad among 916 self-proclaimed "likely voters" (this video shows the ad and the dial test results). It took place primarily Wednesday and Thursday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

Nearly 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say they'd cross sides and vote for Trump, while a small number, or 14 percent, of Republicans claim they'd vote for Clinton. When those groups were further broken down, a far higher percentage of the crossover Democrats contend they are "100 percent sure" of switching than the Republicans.

I can tell you this - they are not from the old farm families out this way.

And they aren't our college students, who are much more likely to occupy the Dean's Office over some micro-aggression or other. (Even this is unlikely, given we are always about a decade behind the times)

If the history of the Aryan Nations is an indicator, and it is, these "Idaho" folks most likely have drifted up here from that cess pool, California, or from back east somewhere, some perhaps from the mid west. Arizona is a candidate, as is West Virginia, and perhaps parts of Pennsylvania.

January 9, 2016Syria's President Assad may be the least bad alternativeBy Jim Whiting

Bashar Assad, admittedly, is not a good guy. He's minimally competent as a head of state, intolerant in the extreme of dissent, and bereft of popular support. He has received support, however, from an ally: Russia, in the form of Vlad the Impaler Putin. Putin also is not a good guy, with several opponents dying unexpectedly by unusual means and with some imprisoned because of excessive wealth. He has compounded this infelicity by confessing his admiration for Donald Trump.

This may suggest to some that we, the USA, should come in on the side of the "rebels" in Syria. Nothing could be farther from desirable or even acceptable. The rebels are Islamist and want to supplant the heretic Shi'ite Alawite regime with a sharia-compliant nation. This is in no one's interest – certainly not ours. The "rebels" we have so far spent half a billion dollars arming and supplying have immediately donated everything to the al-Nusra Islamists in Syria. John McCain famously said he could tell who were the good rebels by looking in their eyes. Well, thank God we didn't elect him.

To oversimplify, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – for now. So whatever Assad and Putin do in their own countries – leave Ukraine out of it for now – is beside the point. If they're going to kill ISIS, we're happy to oblige. Or...we should be. In fact, our elected representatives, and their appointees, and their catamites in the media, are horrified at the prospect of supporting, or being seen to support, such blackguards as Assad and Putin. No matter that they're working to kill those who plan to kill us. There are stains on their escutcheons that will not allow for approval.

Those devout Muslim Islamist/jihadists are in free range in this country, killing cops, attacking civilians, and we're concerned with the purity of soul of potential allies? If we should be able to form a stable alliance for the nonce, is there not some chance that we will be able to reform the miscreants? Do we not believe in rehabilitation? Improvement? Redemption?

Give me a break. If we had a reasonable president who had affection for America and an understanding of the world, we would not be having this conversation. Importantly, a unified American/Russian policy, for the moment, would counter the Islamic fundamentalism that has made a bloodbath of the Middle East and threatens the world. Once we reduce jihad to rubble, we can go back to...negotiating...our differences.

The notion that Jihad, being a doctrine and tradition, as well as inspiration for millions of young Muslim men, can be "reduced to rubble" is questionable. But let's for the sake of argument assume ISIS can be bombed out of existence (also questionable - I believe they will be with us for quite some time). That would remove the only major obstacle (ISIS territory) lying athwart Iran's ambition to close its "Shi'ite crescent" from its own territory, via Assad's Syria, to Hizballah's Lebanon, right up to the Israeli border. Good idea?

If I win the $900 million tonight, in addition to doubling my promised stipend to the people here, I'm thinking of buying an aircraft carrier, hiring Q as Admiral, and heading out to the Mediterranean to put things to right.

No matter what the final outcome is, you can count on at least one thing, the region will be in much worse shape than when the US first intervened.

Disregarding the fact there is no 'final outcome' one might consider the beneficial results of American support for the Egyptian/Israeli peace process and treaty all these years (until Obama at least), among other things.....Ian was better off under the Shah, etc...

If anything we may have learned the area is better off when the military dictators are supported,Saddam included, rather than some fantasy about some 'Arab Spring'....

These days the Saudis are becoming really concerned about the reliability of our 'nuclear umbrella'....

As Luther pointed out in one of his few prescient moments, to do nothing is just another way of doing something....

This is what happens when a government -- namely the United States government -- mistakes talk for action -- when the Secretary of State equates sitting at a fancy table in Vienna with the willingness of the parties to engage in actual give and take diplomacy. When Americans believe countries will simply cede their national or societal interests, as they understand them, just because we want it.

Saudi-Iranian tension is not an impediment to resolving the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian civil war is a manifestation of Saudi-Iranian differences.

This is the reality of modern Saudi-Iranian relations since the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. Its first manifestation was the Iran-Iraq war that killed more than a million people. It is what drives the arming and funding of both Sunni and Shiite jihadists from Uighurs in China to Bedouins in Sinai to Boko Haram in Nigeria to Libya to Syria to Iraq to Mali to Chechnya and Dagestan to Yemen. It is the 21st century incarnation of a 7th century war.

Secretary Kerry wants them to have a conversation. They want to win. He wants them to focus on the misery of Syria and the threat of ISIS. They want to win. He wants them to be civilized. They want to win.

Why now?

The Obama administration has had as its fundamental operating principle the removal of American forces from the Middle East, replaced by management of the region by regional players. But from the Romans through the Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Ottomans, British, and French this region never, ever ruled itself through nation-states. To think it would/could do so now is foolish at best.

The U.S. is not a traditional colonial or occupying power. Our primary interest is in the free movement of goods and people across the seas, including oil, but without necessarily managing the internal affairs of other people; at least not much. But the regional players knew that if they took action that severely threatened U.S. interests, we would defend those, and generally defend our regional friends.

...one might consider the beneficial results of American support for the Egyptian/Israeli peace process and treaty all these years (until Obama at least), among other things.....Ian was better off under the Shah, etc...

Tell it to the millions that have died as a result of our actions and/or interference, the tens of millions we have turned into refugees, the terrorists we helped create and support, the trillions we wasted killing people instead of using it to save lives or make them better, the failed states we helped create, etc...

Yup, like WiO said, Saddam was the best Shia killing machine ever invented.

Should have left him alone.

Point being, these are tough questions, what to do.

*********Compared to what we should do or not do over there, what we should do here is crystal clear - no more Moslem immigration.

Let's always be honest -

The Controversy over Syrian Refugees Misses the Question We Should Be Asking

Let’s be honest: When someone advocates for large-scale Muslim immigration from the world’s worst conflict zones, they are arguing that the West should open its borders to people who are overwhelmingly anti-Semitic, disproportionately religiously intolerant, and harboring disturbing numbers of men who have no moral reservations about sexual assault.

Culture matters, and cultural differences exist for a reason. The miserable cultures of much of North Africa and the Middle East exist in part because of the very people who now wish to migrate to Western shores......

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.